Bringing together scholars from the humanities, social sciences and publishing, this collection adds historical depth and specificity to the American cultural history of twentieth- and twenty-first-century popular romance fiction. The contributors examine the genre's eighteenth- and nineteenth-century contexts, the relationships between love and race, the emergence of LGBTQ romance, the dynamic tension between romance fiction and second-wave feminism, and the practical and rhetorical aspects of the romance industry. sakriti opis